Report: The team behind Facebook Home is no more

Is Facebook giving up on its Android launcher efforts? The dissolution of the Facebook Home team would suggest so.

According to The New York Times, the Facebook Home team is no longer, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that the social networking giant is ceasing its Android skin efforts, it doesn’t bode well for its future either.

If you remember, Facebook Home came out last spring alongside the failed HTC First, the social network’s attempt at selling users on the idea of its custom software preloaded onto a device. The app hooked directly into the Android operating system and it actually offered some neat features, like Chat Heads—now a feature in Facebook Messenger—and feed updates on the Lock Screen. Facebook promised it would push out monthly updates to Home, and even though the app has received some major features in the last year, it’s still plagued by negative reviews.

It’s entirely possible that may be the last we see of Home, especially since Facebook took after Google’s idea of breaking out its features into multiple apps it can update individually. Some of them, like Facebook's primary app, offer the same features as Home without a launcher overtaking the screen. The Facebook Home app, on the other hand, hasn't even been updated since January. And with so many other popular launcher apps in the Google Play store, it might be best for Facebook to just keep it simple for now.

Florence Ion Staff Writer

Florence is a technology journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She covers Android smartphones and tablets and its various forks. She's also written about a variety of other tech-related things for Ars Technica, Maximum PC, Mac|Life, PCGamer, PCWorld, and Nintendo Power.More by Florence Ion